Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1887-04-20
BOGUS LITERARY regulations.

Fashionable Folks Who Masquerade IN
Other Peoples Talent-A Curious Craze.
l have young friend, q really talented
fellow, who if he had been cast upon the
town would have made place for him
self IN literature He happens to enjoy a
competency, however, and takes life Tar
too easily to disturb himself with more
serious employment than the killing Of
time. He is fond of making literary ex-
periments in his more industrious mo-
rnents, and has quite collection of man
uscript slowed away in his desk, which he
is continually promising himself to revise
and polish up for publication. Some Of
these affairs, stories, sketches, little farces,
fragments Of verse, he has read to me,
and they have invariably been sufficiently
ingenious in construction and good in
quality to impress themselves upon my
memory.
Judge my amazement, therefore, when
found one of the stories I had listened to
over the cigars and grog in his apartments
printed in prominent magazine q week
or SO ago. Judge of my further astonish-
ment when noted that it was credited
not to the real author but to certain
woman who enjoys quite q literary repu-
tation in society, one of the swell amateurs
who have made writing for the press q
fashion. There had been a sort Of ssnti-
mental weakness on my friends part for
this person l knew. It was evident now
that it had gone the length of his lending
her his talent to masquerade in.
1 got quite collection of her other sto-
ries together, or rather of those she has
been credited with writing and read them
attentively. There was no mistaking their
authorship. Every one bore the earmarks
of my idle amateur, who would not take
the trouble to seek an outlet for his talent,
but was ready to bestow it on woman
who had caught his platonic fancy. When
next met him taxed him with this in
justice to himself, but he laughed the re-
proof lightly off
'sBless your innocent soulr' he said.
''They all do it. Do you suppose the
stories Miss x. and Mrs. Y. sign are any
more original with them than Mrs. z. 8
are with herr The only difference is that
they buy theirs from some professional
scribbler Mrs z. happens to get bars
for less substantial price"
Curiously enough, only couple Of
nights later, I encountered at the theatre
an able literary hack whom have known
for many years. He looked unusually
prosperous, considering his old estate. he
was, he said, earning good salary as
editor on q morning paper, and put
ting in his odd time writing stories and
poetry. AS had never seen any Of these
in print I remarked upon it. He an
swered, little embarrassed:
"Wen, you soc I don't print them
over my own name"
l supposed he meant that he used q
nom de plume, and as he exhibited no de-
sire to be confidential I pressed my in
quiries no further. have since learned
that he has for months been supplying one
of our society geniuses with manuscript
which that person adopts as her own She
pays him handsomely for the work, and
probably gives the manuscript away for
the sake of getting II into type.
There must be plenty Of kindred cases
to these, for the literary craze is fairly
rampant in society, and where two ex-
amples of this form Of fraud are to be
found you may be bound that Others exist.
However, it is SO rarely that literature
gets the benefit Of fashionable fad that
we can condone an evil that has . certain
alloy Of good. In the excuses to which
vanity will run, this is perhaps the most
curious.-Alfred Trumble in The Jour
nalist.